It's not just China that experienced a slowdown in smartphone sales this year, the U.K. did as well. A new report by Strategy Analytics shows us that UK smartphone shipments declined 14% annually from 8.5 million units in Q4 2017 to 7.3 million in Q4 2018.

The United Kingdom is the largest smartphone market in Western Europe and it is suffering from weak sales, due to longer replacement rates, a lack of wow designs, and Brexit uncertainty causing consumers to hold off on some new purchases, according to Rajeev Nair, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics.

Further, Mawston noted that "Apple has a prestigious brand and extensive retail presence across the UK market. Despite a slight decline from a year ago, Apple’s grip on the UK smartphone market remains fairly tight and the iPhone has two times more market share than closest rival Samsung."

Woody Oh, Director at Strategy Analytics, weighed in by noting that "Samsung clung on to second place with 19 percent smartphone market share in the UK during Q4 2018, down from 21 percent a year ago. Samsung’s UK smartphone market share has more than halved during the past six years."

The statistics show that both Apple and Samsung are facing intense competitive pressure from Huawei. The chart below shows that while Apple and Samsung sales both declined in Q4 2018 by 41% collectively, Huawei directly benefited by grabbing 36% in that same quarter.

Strategy Analytics claims that Huawei is growing fast in the UK, due to heavy co-marketing of its models like the P20 with major carriers like EE.

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